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Chara, a deep-tech start-up, announced raising $4.75 million in pre-series A round led by Exfinity Venture Partners.
The round also saw participation from Vietnam-based Big Capital, venture arm of Bitexco, Log9 Materials, Kalaari Capital and ciie.co.
“Chara is building a scalable, cloud-controlled, and rare-earth-free platform for designing, building, and deploying electric motors for EVs, HVAC, and various other applications. Its proprietary Drive Control Firmware (DCF) is the brain of our motor controller and is a suite of packages consisting of advanced motor control algorithms at its core. The motor control algorithms are designed to get the most out of in-house designed Chara motors,” it said in a press release.
The motors will be based on a specialized patent-pending variation of the well-known SRM (Switched Reluctance Motor) and SynRM technologies and other magnet-free motor technologies.
Also read:Record fundraising by private equity investors in 2022
“We’re working towards turning the current motor tech on its head, doing away with inefficient and rare-earth-dependent practices. We are building rare-earth-free, hyper-efficient, cost-effective, intelligent motors and controllers for EV, HVAC, and other industries,”said Bhaktha Keshavachar, Founder and CEO, Chara Technologies.
Its current motor range starts at fractional kW and goes up to tens of kW, with voltages ranging from 48V to 400V. Chara has built motors for 2-wheelers (hub and mid-mount), 3 and 4-wheeler LCVs, and HVAC use cases. The motors and their matching controllers are being field tested and are expected to go into production later this year. In addition, it has projects lined up for building motors and controllers for heavy commercial vehicles and will build higher voltages and powers in the future, according to the company.
“To build SRM/Hybrid version of SRM motors, an interdisciplinary team with backgrounds in electro-mechanical, power electronics, and software domains is a must. Exfinity strongly believes that the EV story for South Asia and similar markets has to be contextualized and not replicated from the US and European markets. Chara Motors is also a great example for Atmanirbhar Bharat as it delinks the permanent magnet supply chain dependency from China and other countries,” said Chinnu Senthilkumar, Managing Partner, Exfinity.
Also read:‘Atmanirbhar Bharat should not merely be a classical import substitution policy’
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